Lives of the Great Romantics, Part I:

Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth by their Contemporaries

This edition brings together some of the most influential and fascinating memoirs of Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth, all written by nineteenth-century biographers with first-hand knowledge of their subject, collected here in facsimile for the first time.

Early biographers fashioned the image of Shelley as an inspired and unworldly spirit, yet at the same time struggled to deal with or repress the matter of his sexual conduct. It is clear from current controversies that many of the uncertainties facing his biographers then are still with us today. Of the memoirs of Wordsworth, De Quincey's essays (greatly disliked by the Wordsworth family) and Christopher Wordworth's pious Memoirs which they commissioned, are perhaps the most influential. In the collected memoirs of Byron, it is Byron himself who is seen the most clearly to be struggling to control the portrayal of his character for posterity.

Contents

Volume 1
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Including extracts from: Polidori, The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori (1816); William Hazlitt, On Paradox and Common-place (1821); Mary Shelley, Preface to Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824); Thomas Medwin, Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824); T J Hogg 'Shelley at Oxford' (1832-3); Thomas Medwin, The Shelley Papers (1833); Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (1828); Mary Shelley, Preface and notes from Shelley's Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments (1840), including extracts from Edward Williams's Journal (1821-22); Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847); J Dix, Pen and Ink Sketches of Pets, Preachers and Politicians (1846); T J Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1858); Leigh Hunt, The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt (1850); Thomas Love Peacock, 'Memories of Shelley' (1860-2); Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858); Lady Jane Shelley, Shelley Memorials: from Authentic Sources (1859); Thornton Hunt, 'Shelley. By One Who Knew Him' (1863)

Volume 2
Lord Byron
Including extracts from: Sir Walter Scott, 'Character of Lord Byron' (1824); John Galt, The Life of Lord Byron (1830); Thomas Moore, The Life of Byron (1832); Robert Dallas, Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron (1824); John Cam Hobhouse, Recollections of a Long Life (1909); Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries (1828); Thomas Medwin, Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824); Teresa Guiccioli, My Recollections of Lord Byron (1869); James Kennedy, Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron (1830); Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858)

Volume 3
William Wordsworth
Including extracts from: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817); John Wilson ('Philip Kempferhausen'), 'Letters from the Lakes' (1819); William Hazlitt, 'My First Acquaintance with Poets' (1823); William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (1825); Anon., Galignani Edition, 'Memoir of William Wordsworth Esq.' (1828); T.Q.M., 'Notes on a Tour from Skipton to Keswick' (1828); Orville Dewey, The Old World and the New (1836); Henry F Chorley, Memorials of Mrs Hemans (1836); Joseph Cottle, Early Recollections (1837); Thomas DeQuincey, 'Lake Reminiscences from 1807 to 1830' (1839); Thomas De Quincey, 'Sketches of Life and Manners' (1840); Barron Field, Memoirs of the Life and Poetry of William Wordsworth (1839, 1846); James Henry Leigh Hunt, The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt (1850); Robert Pearse Gillies, Memoirs of a Literary Veteran (1851); Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of William Wordsworth (1851); Benjamin Robert Haydon, Life, from his Autobiography and Journals (1853); Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits (1856); Edwin Paxton Hood, William Wordsworth; A Biography (1856); Thomas Moore, Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence (1853-6); John Davy, The Angler in the Lake District (1857); Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858); Thomas Colley Grattan, Beaten Paths; and Those Who Trod Them (1862); William Jerdan, Men I Have Known (1862); Robert Perceval Graves, 'Recollectionns of Wordsworth and the Lake Country' (1869); Henry Crabb Robinson, Reminiscences and Correspondence (1869); Julian Charles Young, A Memoir of Charles Mayne Young (1871); Thomas Cooper, The Life of Thomas Cooper: Written by Himself (1872); Sara Coleridge, Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge (1873); Eliza Fletcher, Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher (1875); Harriet Martineau, Autobiography (1877); Samuel Rowles Pattison (ed.), The Brothers Wiffen (1880); Thomas Carlyle, Reminiscences (1881); Caroline Fox, Memories of Old Friends (1882); Hardwicke Drumond Rawnsley, 'Reminiscences of Wordsworth among the Peasantry of Westmoreland' (1882); Alaric Alfred Watts, Alaric Watts. A Narrative of His Life (1884); Henry Taylor, Autoboigraphy of Henry Taylor 1800-1875 (1885); Aubrey De Vere, Essays, Chiefly on Poetry (1887); Ellis Yarnall, Wordsworth and the Coleridges (1899)

Reviews

‘In sum, then, this is a deeply absorbing collection. It affords many of the pleasures and insights of traditional literary biography, but it also encourages one to reflect critically upon the biographical project itself.’
– Gregory Dart, British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin

Return to top